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Remember how disappointed everyone was back in October when Apple announced an iPhone 4S and not an iPhone 5?

Everyone had been led to believe by scores of reports that there would be a revolutionary new iPhone with a bigger screen and a new slimmer look.

Well, it turns out the "iPhone 5" – or at least, a fully redesigned iPhone – was real and it was scrapped only months before the iPhone 4S was announced.

We've been told this by an industry source who has been right about future Apple products in the past.

We have not been able to verify what he told us with a second source. So we're still treating these details as rumors. You should probably still read this post with a nice fat dose of salt.

The story our source told us does, however, fit into a broader narrative that is currently being passed around the industry. Because of that we thought you'd like to hear what we heard and make a judgment for yourself.

So, here's what we were told.

Our source said that Apple engineers he knows thought until about three months before the iPhone 4S was released, that a new fully re-designed iPhone was going to be Apple's next big announcement.

This source said that he spent about two weeks with one prototype version of this phone.